The Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute (BMWHI) is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to helping protect the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and conserve its natural and cultural values.

NEWS & EVENTS

Each year in June the Institute’s Education Program Leader, Rosalie Chapple, brings international university students to the Blue Mountains as part of a 3-week immersion in Australia’s protected areas.

During the multi-week travelling course, students visit protected areas in a range of climatic regions to observe Australia’s unique flora and fauna, and to understand the challenges of conserving and managing natural and cultural heritage in the 21st century.

For long term Blue Mountains residents, changes to weather patterns, plant life and animal sightings have always been the subject of neighbourly discussions but, until now, many of these changes haven’t been receiving the kind of scientific scrutiny they deserve.

This changed last year when the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute and Scenic World joined forces to launch our Climate Change and Ecological Monitoring project.

While bushwalking is a passion shared by many of us living in the Blue Mountains, few of us know what species of plant life we pass by on our walks, and even fewer again will ever take the time to develop a detailed knowledge of the species we come into contact with.

Not so though for Blackheath resident, Tamara Venables, who has spent the past two years photographing and documenting orchid species throughout the Blue Mountains region.

If you’ve recently spotted a koala or other unusual critters in your backyard, you’re not alone.

A locally run, Citizen Science monitoring program which records and collects data about changes to our environment has been capturing fascinating movements of native plant and animal species in the Blue Mountains region.

BMWHI’s Dr Rosalie Chapple has just co-authored a ground-breaking new report which explores the impact of connections with nature on human wellbeing. The report has just been launched by the International Union of the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Egypt.